


Distance

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, FOXHOUND era, Neither Naomi Nor Wolf Knows How To Talk About Feelings, canon drug abuse and Wolf knows exactly what she's doing, mentions of drug abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 02:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14684580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: Naomi probably couldn't ever really trust anyone who trusts her too much.That's why she likes Wolf, and that's why conversations about important things are so difficult.  She still tries (she tells herself).





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> For [MGS rarepair week](https://twitter.com/RarepairWeek?lang=en) prompt 4, "guns are a girl's best friend". I only realized how much I liked this pairing recently but??? it's good.

She was set up on the overlook a quarter-mile outside of the base, exactly where Naomi expected to find her.

The long grass and dying late-summer wildflowers rustled around Naomi’s calves as she headed up the hill. She didn’t try to walk quietly; she wanted Sniper Wolf to hear her coming. Wasn’t trying to startle her. Didn’t really think she could, even if she was trying.

She saw a dog before she saw Wolf herself. Sniper Wolf had her preferred perch, hidden well by grasses and brush but with a clear view of the surrounding rolling plains. She lay there now, her rifle set up, a long black scar in an otherwise serene scene. Wolf was staring down the rifle’s sight, focused on something off across the plain towards the mountains, far away from this quiet sunny place. A large shaggy gray dog lay next to her, its eyes half-closed, its snout resting on its paws. The dog looked up as Naomi approached. It huffed softly, taking a moment to decide whether to growl a threat, then recognized the intruder as a known and approved friend, and wagged its tail once in greeting before settling down again. Diyar, Naomi recognized the dog in return, or maybe Briska, one of the big girls with dark muzzles and powerful shoulders, a guard dog.

Wolf didn’t look up.

Naomi stopped once her shadow crossed Wolf’s face. “Wolf?” No acknowledgement. Wolf’s breathing was slow, steady, even, her gaze fixed. Gentle prodding for a response would get her nowhere. “I ran your blood work myself. I need to talk to you.”

That made Wolf look up, unhurriedly, her blonde hair cascading like a shimmering waterfall over her face and shoulder. She’d been listening, of course she had, just choosing not to respond.

Naomi sat down, cross-legged, in the grass next to her. After a beat, Wolf pulled herself up to a kneeling position, her feet tucked neatly beneath her, the butt of her rifle resting in her lap. “I have no medical concerns I want to bring to you,” Wolf said.

“Whether you _want_ to or not is immaterial right now,” Naomi said. “I have to submit these physicals to the commander tomorrow, and I _know_ he doesn’t actually care, but it’s my job, and – Wolf, there are unacceptable levels of benzodiazepines in your bloodstream, and I wanted to talk to you about this before I’m required to report it.”

“Report it then, doctor.” Wolf didn’t sound concerned. Naomi sighed. Wolf probably had no reason to be concerned. Naomi was reasonably confident Liquid Snake never read her reports anyway, which was always fine with her – he signed pretty much whatever she set before him, as long as she assured him it was important. In any case, he let Wolf do more or less whatever she wanted. Even if he did read them, Naomi doubted he’d do anything about it. But she was capable of being concerned about other things. Of being concerned about her patients. About _Wolf_.

“As a friend, then, and off the record,” Naomi said. “You’ve been taking diazepam again.”

The soft snort Wolf gave at “again” made it clear that, despite Naomi’s many attempts, Wolf had never actually stopped. “It helps,” Wolf said.

“In small doses, during missions. At rates like yours, it’s dangerous.”

“It helps me shoot,” Wolf said. “It helps me to be still, and to breathe. It makes my gun a part of my own body. This,” and she patted her rifle almost as fondly as she did her dogs, “is my life. Would you deny me that?”

“It also can, and _does,_ impair your sleep, and judgement, and coordination, and reaction time,” Naomi snapped back. “I know you haven’t been sleeping well. And impaired reaction time on the battlefield _will_ kill you.”

Wolf smiled wryly at that, showing all her teeth. “It’s funny, Naomi,” she said, and she pronounced the name with soft sounds, _Nah-oh-mi_ , “as a doctor, I would expect you to also include the drug’s effects on memory.”

And that was that, wasn’t it. Naomi had no response to give. This conversation was over and Wolf had won, because Sniper Wolf, as always, knew exactly what she was doing. She wouldn’t be dissuaded from anything, by anybody. “I’m a doctor,” she said, finally. “I’m here to help, Wolf.”

“No, you aren’t,” Wolf said. “Don’t insult me or denigrate your own honor by pretending. You are here for yourself, the same as the rest of us. Embrace it.”

“That’s a harsh thing to say about absolutely everyone you know.”

“Can you deny it? Nobody finds themselves in FOXHOUND if they have anywhere else they belong.”

_That isn’t true,_ Naomi wanted to retort, or, _I have an M.D., I could belong anywhere I want,_ but that was lying to herself, wasn’t it? Wolf meant what she said. Naomi had come here for Frank, but she’d found him, they’d tracked blood and ash out of the burning lab together, she’d had to nearly carry him out into the sun. She had told herself it was over then, told herself that she would abandon this name and leave the military for good once she succeeded. That this was just for him. That was three years ago, and she was still here. Where else could she go, really? Nowhere else would allow, let alone _fund_ , the kind of work she was doing, the cutting edge of genetic research that put questions of ethics aside for the much more interesting questions of possibility.

She’d never told this story to Wolf. She’d never told this story to anyone, and even Wolf knew more than many. Still only in the vaguest of terms – her brother had been in the military, and he died, and she was still grieving and still angry, and she wanted to use her medical knowledge to protect other soldiers and help them survive. Which wasn’t _untrue_ , exactly. But it wasn’t the _truth_ , either, and Wolf didn’t have to know her story to know that there were no pure hearts or lofty ideals to be found in FOXHOUND.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t care,” Naomi said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t help where I can, while I’m here.”

Wolf laughed. “And I’m touched that you want to try. Truly.” She leaned over, cupping one hand around Naomi’s cheek, nestling her fingertips in Naomi’s sleek dark hair. “But if you care, then meet me as you are, hm?” Wolf leaned her face close. “You don’t have the eyes of a healer. You have the eyes of a hunter.”

“Cute.”

“Think what you like, Dr. _Hunter,_ ” Wolf said. “I won’t change your mind, and I don’t want to try. You won’t change my mind, and all I’m asking is the same respect.” Wolf tilted her head, teasingly. The sunlight shimmered on her shifting hair. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do,” Naomi said. Of course she didn’t. And the way Wolf grinned when she said that, she knew, of course she knew, and she was fine with that. Maybe even respected her for it.

“Mm-hm, of course you do.” And Wolf leaned in and kissed her. Naomi closed her eyes and leaned forward to meet her. The warmth of her body pressed close, Wolf’s teeth on her lip, it was almost possible to ignore the pressures pushing them forward and believe that this, here, was something like love.

Too few moments passed before Wolf pulled away. She rolled her body back, sitting back on her heels, hands moving back to their more natural position on her rifle. The illusion of the potential for genuine intimacy fizzled into the thin early-autumn air alongside the warmth from her lips. The breeze rolling over the plains that had been so pleasant before was now cold on Naomi’s skin.

Wolf was returning to her own element. She shifted her weight to her right foot, bent her left knee in front of her, raised her rifle and braced it against her body to keep it steady, her attention already returned to that something far off in the distance. “A wolf, in the wild, hunts only for itself and its family, and only for the food it needs. There’s purpose, there’s balance. A dog hunts at the command of a master, for sport. For power and glory. There’s no honor in a life like that.” She turned her head ever so slightly, her sidelong glance at Naomi serious and appraising. “If you’re still free, Naomi, keep yourself that way.”

The dog – Diyar, Naomi was sure now, this one was Diyar, one of the older girls, strong but calm – seemed to sense the tension in her master, because she stood up and shook herself off, and as Wolf peered through the sight on her rifle and minutely adjusted her grip, Diyar trotted around and lay down again, positioning herself now between Wolf and Naomi. Wolf adjusted her position slightly to accommodate the dog pressing herself against her side. Diyar nuzzled her head into her paws and whined contentedly, her tail wagging in a slow rhythm almost in time with Wolf’s breathing. They moved as a practiced unit, Sniper Wolf and her dog and her gun.

Naomi scratched behind Diyar’s ears, and Diyar tilted her head to give her a better angle. Wolf didn’t look over but smiled, just a little, like she could tell. This carefully-maintained distance was comforting, this carefully-measured emotional closeness about all Naomi was willing to trust. All Wolf was willing to give. A comfortable and mutually-beneficial equilibrium, if Naomi could just allow it to be.

Minutes passed. With nearly imperceptible movements, Wolf refined her aim, and fired. The _crack_ from the gun, the sudden explosion, shattered the afternoon, and Naomi flinched. Diyar twitched her ears but barely reacted. She was well-trained. Wolf had caught the recoil with fluidity and was already loading another shell, her movements slow but almost inhumanly precise. Raising her gun again, she tensed her shoulders, fired another round. Naomi tried to follow her gaze, but whatever the target was, she couldn’t see it. Wolf stared down the sight with an intensity that meant she must be looking at _something_ , though, a series of small targets or blowing leaves or small animals out of their burrow, something only she could see, the long point of her gun meeting her vision hundreds of yards away.

Wolf loved that gun significantly more than she loved Naomi. She’d known that before, she’d known that going in. As she sat there stroking Diyar’s thick fur and wondering how much longer she could stay like this without her foot falling asleep, Naomi knew that what they had here wouldn’t work if it were any other way.

When she filed the reports on the physicals, she didn’t mention the benzodiazepines.


End file.
